Esa-Pekka Salonen & Shostakovich:
Anu Komsi (Soprano), Pia Komsi (Soprano), BBC symphony
Orchestra, Conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Barbican Hall,
London, 12.05.2006 (GD)
Esa-Pekka Salonen's ' Wing on Wing' was written for the
opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles
and its Architect Frank O. Gehry, where it was first performed
in 2004. This was the UK premiere, (although Salonen has
already recorded the work for DG with Finnish forces).
Frank O. Gehry is generally considered to be a 'post-modern'
architect, and, like Xenakis, has found analogies between
architectural and musical discourses and configurations.
Salonen incorporates (or decorporates) Gehry's pre-recorded
voice-over at randomly selected moments in the score.
We hear fragments of Gehry's 'voiced' thoughts on aesthetics,
architecture and post-modernism, among other things. As
Salonen informs us in the programme note the piece also
invokes allusions to various sea-scapes and a species
of fish which sing in E natural. The two coloratura sopranos
Salonen uses are initially dispersed antiphonally at each
end of the orchestra’s stage spectrum; they later
appear at each end of the first balcony in the hall. The
Komsi sisters (who sang in the first performance) oscillate
between sung words and soprano sounds which blend in and
out of the orchestra. Although Salonen does not mention
it the two sopranos various ghostly wailings and intonations
are surely related to those distant 'sirens' in the 10th
book of Homer's Odyssey whose seductive songs from
the sea sing of the Trojan War, death and seduction.
Despite the works 'post-modern' credentials it is not
a particularly radical work in musical terms. Salonen
has obviously used the influences of Sibelius, Rautavaara
and French influences from Debussy, Messiaen and even
Ravel. Having said this the piece has a kind of voice
of its own, and it is superbly orchestrated and structured.
I have not seen the score, but it clearly incorporates
elements of tonal inversion, ostinato-like sequences with
complex cross-rhythms and alternating chorale patterns
in the strings, woodwinds and brass. Saraste conducted
the piece with obvious empathy and knowledge of his fellow
Finn's musical idiom. The BBC SO orchestra responded with
total commitment and involvement.
Shostakovich's Eighth symphony (written in Moscow, and
the Moscow district, in the summer months of 1943) was
neglected for a long period in the East and the West,
after its first performance in November 1943 under Yevgeni
Mravinsky, to whom the work is dedicated. I have heard
much heralded performances recently from the likes of
the Latvian (but Russian trained) Mariss Jansons, and
the Russian, Gergiev. They were both disappointing in
terms of adherence to Shostakovich's meticulous instructions
to the conductor. This was more surprising in Janson's
case as he studied in St Petersberg with Mravinsky, and
probably went over the score with the great conductor.
So how did the Finn Saraste respond to Shostakovich's
awe-inspiring challenge? Initially Saraste plunged audience
and orchestra into the opening commanding 7-note idea,
ff on celli and basses, an idea that, in a range
of tonal registers, some distant, pervades the works massive
entirety. This initial C minor opening affirmation soon
subsides into a complex range of tonal vicissitudes, emanating
from C minor, which wander through long paragraphs which
involve alternating sections of the whole orchestra at
various sustained p, pp markings, initially in
5/4. All this incredible range of sustained pp
is subtended by a tense and ominous bass recitative which
intone and transmogrify the opening C minor chords. Saraste
simply did not contour these recitatives in the way Shostakovich
asks for. Yes, the orchestra played them, but go to any
of Mravinsky's recordings, or those by Rozhdestvenky,
Kondrashin, Barshai, and Kitajenko to hear how vital to
the work a correct articulation of the underlying range
of recitatives can sound…they frame and organize
the whole work… really a question of getting the
works pulse.
Then, in the huge development section, still dominated
by C minor and C sharp minor (with shades of A and D minor)
Shostakovich introduces a grotesque and brutal march-like
figure (literally a brutalized version of the main C minor
tonic) between trumpets and trombones, played in canon.
Here Shostakovich underlines the main Allegro non troppo
marking of the movement. Why do conductors, including
tonight’s conductor, ignore this and do the absolute
opposite of what the composer requests and turn on an
accelerando thus missing the sinister impact of the grotesque
march? To avoid an awkward slowing down (allargando) Saraste
kept up the over-fast tempo thereby robbing the cataclysmic
climax, (now inflected with C major on full orchestra
with a massive onslaught from the battery of percussion)
of its devastating and grim power. This shattering climax
subsides around a complex web of new variations on previous
motif's, then into a plaintive melody on pp tremolando
strings (again the recitative pulse underemphasized) from
which develops the long cor anglais cadenza (now underscored
with a varying, uneven pulse.) If the score is read carefully
it will be realized that this extended cadenza incorporates
virtually all the preceding themes in metamorphosized
form; at many moments here the actual tonality is undecided
between major/minor. No wonder the programme notes refer
to Shostakovich as the composer of 'uncertainty'. And
this in a work usually seen in terms of affirmative negation!
The BBC SO's cor anglais player executed the cadenza almost
fautlessly in terms of literal execution, but again I
missed that ethereal, (haunting) quality one hears with
Mravinsky and Rozhdestvensky.
Shostakovich described the second movement Allegretto
as a ‘simple, rather burlesque, march movement alternating
on a motto in D flat and C flat.' Here Saraste maintained
the Allegretto throughout the movement as the composer
requests. This was all fine, with particularly deft playing
from the orchestra's piccolo at the refrain towards the
movements final. I thought the powerful ff abrupt
timpani cadence at the end of the movement a little under-
played.
The third movement, a toccata-ostinato, initially in E
minor, is marked Allegro non troppo. It is simply beyond
my powers of comprehension how a conductor, who has just
obeyed the composer’s Allegretto marking (second
movement) can then totally disobey the same composer’s
Allegro non troppo marking. But that is exactly what Saraste
did. The piece was taken too fast, more like an Allegro
assai, to fully realize the composer’s frequent
'marcatissimo' and 'sforzandi' markings. The ff
interjections on brass and percussion with overlapping,
percussive sforzandi on celli and basses went for virtually
nothing here. The martial trio section with trumpet fanfares
and implacable side drum rhythms failed to make their
contrasting effect. The build-up to the devastating, self-destructive
climax, hurling the movement into the unison of a subsiding
Passacaglia theme, was again underpowered at this tempo,
and the wonderful contrast from Passacaglia in G sharp
minor, to the C major which initiates the finale was similarly
missed.
There has been all manner of rhetoric relating this symphony
to a specific political programme: it is variously seen
as 'anti-Stalin', or 'anti-Hitler'. Although Shostakovich
was certainly aware of the context in which he was writing
the work, the same year that the German Wehrmacht had
besieged his native Leningrad and Hitler's 6th Army was
attempting (unsuccessfully) to annihilate Stalingrad.
All this cannot be minimized as affecting the mood of
the work. But it can be argued that the symphony exceeds
any particular context, or programme. Perhaps it is better
to see the work as a commentary on any human conflict
or course of destruction. It is also, and foremost, a
musical commentary. The huge Passacaglia was undoubtedly
influenced by J.S. Bach, a composer Shostakovich frequently
studied, even if it is an extremely desolate, and gaunt
commentary. It is also possible that this excess of programme
rhetoric (more apt in the Eleventh and Twelfth Symphonies)
accounts for the agogic distortions some conductors impose
on the music.
The unheroic, rather desolate coda, with a freely developing
waltz rondo on bassoon (neither grave nor gay) was under-characterized,
although well played. The C-D-C motto of the symphony
which reverberates under a haunting descending phrase
from the previous waltz theme, now in C sharp minor, one
of the most poignant endings Shostakovich ever wrote,
gives way to silence. A silence Saraste held for a few
minutes before reticent applause ensued. The BBC SO played
excellently throughout this massive score. However, one
can only imagine what heights they would have achieved
with a conductor who was more in tune with the score.
Geoff Diggines
